Do you remember what it was like? To read Romeo & Juliet
in school for the first time? I do. Painfully so.

There was the
question of who would read Juliet. There was the equally tenuous
question of who would read Romeo. This kind of thing could mark the
rise or fall of the teens in the room. God forbid that the teacher
should pair the cute girl with the geeky boy, or vice versa.

Did that teacher
have any idea about the power he held, in this seemingly simple
casting choice?

I’m not sure if he
did, because I was just one of the teens in the room, keeping my head
down in the hopes of preserving my dignity.

Still, now, the
years stretching between that first teen reading and my grown-up
sensibilities, I imagine the awkwardness might not have belonged only
to we-the-teens. Maybe the teacher could feel it too. If he kept a
diary, I could know once and for all. His secret thoughts might be
almost as intriguing as the play itself. Perhaps more so.

What do teachers
feel when facing William Shakespeare, tales of family feud,
breathless kissing scenes—all in front of a class of teens who are
keeping their heads down (and threatening to fall asleep or plot
their next prank in the process)?

I will never know
what my 8th grade teacher felt. He left me no diary. Educator Callie
Feyen, however, has done me a favor. She has written The Teacher
Diaries: Romeo & Juliet. It begins with a kiss. Then, page by
page, it reveals her generous, hopeful, and humorous heart.

The best teachers
have one—a heart, that is. It helps them use their power well.

My first kiss
happened on the porch of my best friend Celena’s house. It was a
Saturday night in April. I was fifteen.

Before the kiss
happened, I was watching Eddie Murphy’s Delirious with
Celena and her brother Andres. Delirious is raunchy and hilarious,
and the three of us knew almost every line of Murphy’s stand-up
routine. We were laughing so hard I wasn’t sure we’d breathe
again.

The night Neal
kissed me, he was no longer with Celena. But they had dated. For a
while. Like, they were in love. I knew this. Most of Oak Park,
Illinois knew this. And since I’m already walking into awkward
territory, I may as well be completely honest and explain that I saw
Andres just about every day, and he was quiet and funny and I didn’t
mind watching him play basketball with his friends. I don’t think
he minded that I was watching, either.

So the three of us
are listening to Eddie Murphy tell a story about running after an
ice-cream truck, and the stage lights are reflecting off his red
leather pants when Neal knocks on the door looking for me, and the
next thing I know I’m standing outside, my back to the little
Episcopal church that’s kitty-corner to Celena’s house, looking
into Neal’s eyes and inhaling all the Drakkar he’d put on. You
know what happens next.

How could I do this
to Celena? She was crushed when she and Neal broke up. You know those
phrases, “together through thick and thin” and “two peas in a
pod”? That was

Celena and me. Plus,
there was something unsaid with Andres, and I go and kiss his
sister’s ex-boyfriend outside his house in the middle of one of the
greatest stand-up comedy shows of all time. How could I let this
happen?

I’ll tell you how.
Neal had a haircut like no other boy I knew. It was spiky and shaggy
and messy and I used to stare at it in Mr. Brocks’ 8th-grade
English class. I’d wonder how Neal got it like that and why the
other boys wouldn’t do the same with their hair. (We girls were all
curling our bangs so it looked like we had giant caterpillars
sleeping on our foreheads. Somebody cool and beautiful obviously
started that trend, and we followed suit just as fast as we could
kick off our jelly shoes and buy some Aqua Net®.)

Neal was an artist.
He drew on everything. His homework, his shoes, his textbooks. When
he wrote me notes, he always included cartoon guys—silly and
scary—in the margins.

My first crush was
Wil Wheaton’s character in the movie Stand By Me. All my
friends were into Cory Feldman and River Pheonix. Not me. I liked the
storyteller, the quiet artist. Neal told stories with his cartoons
and I liked that.

Finally, there was
the Howard Jones T-shirt. That’s right, Howard Jones. The one whose
songs you probably hear when you’re getting a cavity filled.
Sometimes, Neal wore a Howard Jones concert tour shirt to school and
I lost my mind. It was black with white print and a thick, light blue
stripe that was off-center. I could think of nothing else the days he
wore his Howard Jones T-shirt.

But I didn’t pine
for Neal. At least, not while he was dating Celena. He and I were in
a lot of the same classes together, though, and we were buddies. When
they broke up, and I found out he was interested in me, it was hard
for me to resist those blue eyes, that reckless hair, and that Howard
Jones T-shirt.

Still, I was a good
kid, and I knew better. What I did made no sense. Also, Celena knew
all this. I told her how I felt about Neal, and she was the one who
told me he liked me. She opened the door that Saturday night and
pushed me outside with a smile on her face. After, she celebrated my
first kiss like only a best friend could.

Two years later, I
was at Celena’s, sitting at her dining room table, sobbing over a
different boy. When he broke up with me he told me I was monotonous—a
word I had to look up in the dictionary. In those days, I wrote the
date next to all the words I looked up and 12/5/92 is next to
monotonous: “tedious, boring, dull, uninteresting,
unexciting.” You get the picture.

I learned the
definition one day before my 17th birthday.

That boy immediately
started dating someone else—a girl I knew, who seemed nice. Celena
was in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open when I asked, “Is
this how you felt when I did this to you?” She looked at me,
shocked. I held her stare for a moment and then said, “I’m
sorry.”

I don’t remember
what she said. I know she didn’t say, “That’s okay,” or, “I’m
your best friend no matter what.” That was never Celena’s style.
What I do remember is this: Celena wordlessly walking over to the
table where I was and putting a tub of Cool Whip between us. She
handed me a candy cane, and she opened up a bag of Chex Mix™ and
sat down, and together we ruined our dinner.

I cannot justify or
explain one bit of my behavior on that porch, but I can remember,
very clearly, all the feelings: how hard I was laughing at Eddie
Murphy, that mellow, sweet emotion of hanging out with friends that
are as close as family, the way my stomach flipped when Neal knocked
on the door, the heavy feeling I had standing with him in the dark,
the way my eyes stung and my stomach hollowed out when I said I’m
sorry to Celena.

I suppose someone
could argue what I felt wasn’t really love, but I did feel
something. Perhaps it was a sort of love. No matter. It was colorful,
and vivid, and electric, and I relished whatever it was. I think
being a teenager is like tasting cinnamon gum for the first time and
realizing what taste buds are. We know sour and sweet, spicy and
salty, but not like this.

In the introduction
to Romeo and Juliet, the Oxford University Press explains that
when we first meet Juliet she’s talking with her father about
marriage. A young man named Paris is asking for Juliet’s hand, and
her father wants to know what she thinks. The last sentence in this
paragraph reads: “She hasn’t given much thought to the subject,
but she’s an obedient child, and she promises to give serious
consideration to the man her parents have found for her.”

When I teach Romeo
and Juliet, I use this edition, and it is the next one-sentence
paragraph I make sure my students and I discuss:

“And then she
meets Romeo.”

I think this is a
sentence that’s felt before it’s understood. Like the events
leading up to a first kiss; perhaps the kiss itself. I also think
it’s a sentence that ought to be studied, though it may not be as
exciting as sitting cross-legged on the floor with your best friend
as she asks, “Okay, what happened then? What’d he do then?”
Still, I pursue it.

I tell my students
that when I was in school, my teachers told me you don’t start a
sentence with and, and paragraphs are made up of three to five
sentences.

“I was also told,”
I explain, “that if you are going to break a rule, you better know
why you’re doing it.” Then I ask why the rules were broken for
this pivotal five-word fragment.

I tell the students
this sentence is supposed to feel dramatic because what’s happened
to Juliet is dramatic. Here she is, following all the rules, happy to
consider the suggestions of her parents, and then something happens.
Someone happens.

“Has this ever
happened to you?” I’ll ask. Nobody will answer, but several
students will smile.

“I was in 5th
grade when it happened to me,” I’ll offer, “and I was in Sunday
School.” This usually gets the class laughing and riled. Of all the
places to meet Romeo, it probably shouldn’t be in church.

But that’s the
thing about love. It shows up suddenly, and there’s nothing you can
do to stop it. I think we waste time arguing over whether what Romeo
and Juliet felt was truly love. They felt something, and it was real
and that’s where the story is.

My confession
relaxes my classes. They’re entering an awkward, confusing,
romantic story with someone who’s been there. If I had started the
lesson stating that Romeo and Juliet were two melodramatic teenagers
who made a giant mess of things, I would’ve sent a message that if
my students ever had (or have) an “And then she meets Romeo”
moment, something is wrong with them. They’re wrong for feeling
what they’re feeling. They can’t possibly understand what love is
and how to handle it.

When do we ever
understand what love is and how to handle it? Can you help it when
love strikes? Perhaps we’re better suited to study what love does,
rather than how it ought to be managed.

Love breaks rules.
We learn this in the introduction, but also in understanding who
Romeo and Juliet are: enemies.

“My only love
sprung from my only hate,” Juliet wails when she learns Romeo is a
Montague.

Love puts us at a
loss for words: “It is my lady, O it is my love:” Romeo gasps at
the sight of Juliet. But then, he cannot finish the couplet: “O
that she knew she were!”